John Thain In Talks To Take Over CIT

Bloomberg is reporting
that John Thain may accept the CEO position for CIT Group.

Thain
has recently confronted the fact that some institutions are
truly "too big to fail." He says that assessing some sort of
"fee" tied to banks may help regulation but
has been vague on details.

His new rhetoric is probably welcome at a lender like CIT, who
nearly came close to extinction last year and was forced to
enter bankruptcy to shed its massive amount of debt.

Bloomberg: John Thain, who was Merrill Lynch & Co.’s
chief executive officer before being ousted a year ago, has held
talks to become the head of CIT Group Inc., the commercial lender
that emerged from bankruptcy last month, according to people
familiar with the matter.

Jeffrey Peek, the former investment banker who has managed New
York-based CIT since 2004, is scheduled to leave Jan. 15, CIT
said in a statement today. Thain is considering alternatives and
hasn’t made any decisions, according to one of the people, who
declined to be identified because CIT’s search for a new CEO is
private.

Joining CIT would return Thain, 54, to the top of a public
company a year after he was pushed out by Kenneth D. Lewis, then
the CEO of Bank of America Corp., which agreed to buy Merrill
Lynch amid the 2008 financial crisis. CIT hasn’t publicly
identified potential replacements for Peek, 62, and spokesman
Curt Ritter declined to comment on candidates. The search
continues, Ritter said.